Chevron refinery safety under microscope

Workplace safety

Updated 4:24 pm, Friday, March 8, 2013

Photo: D. Ross Cameron, Associated Press

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Smoke and flame billow from a crude oil unit at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif., Monday, Aug. 6, 2012. The facility makes high-quality products that include gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel and lubricants, as well as chemicals used to manufacture many other useful products. (AP Photo/ContraCosta Times, D. Ross Cameron ) less

Smoke and flame billow from a crude oil unit at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif., Monday, Aug. 6, 2012. The facility makes high-quality products that include gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel and ... more

(03-08) 16:22 PST RICHMOND -- California's workplace-safety agency has spent the equivalent of one-fifth of its entire annual budget investigating last year's Chevron Richmond refinery fire, a top state official testified Thursday during a hearing at which a lawmaker suggested the state needed to strengthen its regulatory efforts.

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Cal/OSHA has slapped Chevron with 25 citations, most of them serious, for allegedly violating safety rules and is seeking nearly $1 million in penalties. Chevron is appealing the fines.

Hancock, whose district includes the Richmond refinery, said the resources that the state is pouring into the Chevron probe suggest that Cal/OSHA is shorthanded. The agency's staffing is one area being looked at by a task force that Gov. Jerry Brown created after the Richmond fire to evaluate refinery safety in California.

Baker, whose department oversees Cal/OSHA and who is a member of the task force, said, "We have identified gaps" in the state's regulatory efforts.

Cal/OSHA has 164 inspectors, only seven of whom are assigned to refineries and chemical plants. That amounts to one inspector per 115,000 workers.

Worker-safety advocates said California ranks last in staffing levels among the 25 states with their own agencies charged with enforcing federal safety rules.

After-the-fact probes

California regulators have focused on responding to accidents and worker complaints at the state's 15 refineries rather than conducting planned inspections.

The Chronicle has reported that in the past decade, those planned inspections consisted of an average of 50 staff hours of checks and resulted in no fines being collected from major oil companies. Of the three planned inspections of Chevron before the August fire, one did not involve an actual visit to the plant. They also averaged 50 staff hours.

In contrast, a national inspection effort that began after a Texas refinery explosion killed 15 workers in 2005 entailed about 1,000 staff hours apiece and resulted in an average of 11 citations against violators. California declined to take part in that effort.

Hancock noted the disparities during her questioning of Baker.

"That says to me we really need to look at our safety standards," Hancock said. "People can die and communities can be severely degraded" during refinery fires.

Regulatory 'gaps'

Baker deferred answering a number of staffing and inspection questions, but acknowledged that staffing was one of the "gaps in our regulations."

Hancock asked whether state investigators might have discovered the alleged workplace-safety violations found at the Richmond refinery after the fire had they done a "wall-to-wall" inspection beforehand.

"It is unknown," Baker said. "The burden really shifts to Chevron in terms of providing us with information that's necessary to identify where there are problem areas - they have that information. The inspectors look, superficially many times, and can't possibly identify every corroded piece of equipment. We really need to rely on information that is being tracked by Chevron itself."

"So it's essentially self-reporting?" Hancock asked.

'Self-reporting'

"Some self-reporting together with expertise of our teams," Baker replied.

Hancock pointed out that Chevron engineers had determined years ago that the Richmond refinery's lines were at risk of corrosion from sulfur-heavy oil, but that refinery managers had decided not to replace some of them. One such corroded line finally sprang a leak Aug. 6, starting the fire.

No workers were seriously injured in the blaze, but 15,000 residents went to hospitals complaining of respiratory and other problems caused by a cloud of toxic gas and smoke.

Baker said her agency is considering ways to get refineries to share more information about their operations with regulators. "We've identified this as a problem," she said.

The goal of the governor's task force, Baker said, is to learn how to prevent another calamity like the Richmond fire.

"I would appreciate that very much," Hancock said, "because sometimes it takes a problem like to this to really look at our systems to see if they are adequate."

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